Author: TechBrunch
WhatsApp currently uses more than 3 billion people per month, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted in a first-quarter results conference call on Wednesday. Founded in 2009 and acquired by Facebook in 2014 for $19 billion, WhatsApp remains at its disposal and does not offer advertising. The app reached the 2 billion monthly active user mark in 2020, but the latest milestone has made it one of the few apps besides Facebook to surpass the 3 billion user mark. Its huge user base makes WhatsApp a key business in the meta. In particular, the company has bet on farms on its…
World, Biometric ID Company, best known for its eye-running ORB devices, announced several partnerships on Wednesday aimed at demonstrating sign-up driving and applications for its technology. World is partnering with dating app conglomerate Match Group to verify the identity of Japanese Tinder users using a global identity verification system. Additionally, World has established separate collaborations with both forecast market startup Kalshi and decentralized lending platform Morpho. These partnerships allow customers to sign in to these services using their already globally registered IDs. World is planning to team up with Visa to launch the World Card. This is a card that…
Epic Games won in an ongoing legal dispute with Apple. As a result, Fortnite was able to return to the US iOS app store as early as next week. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said in Wednesday's ruling that Apple was in a “willful violation” of a 2021 injunction that barred the company from imposing anti-competitive pricing. Apple won a lot of controversy in its trials with Epic Games. One notable exception was the ruling prohibiting iPhone makers from collecting fees for purchases made outside of apps. At the time, Apple was told to change its app store so developers could…
The epic game won in an ongoing legal dispute with Apple. As a result, Fortnite could return to the US iOS app store as early as next week. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said in Wednesday's ruling that Apple was a “willful violation” of a 2021 injunction that banned the company from anti-competitive pricing. Apple has won a lot of debate on the Epic Games Trial. One notable exception was the ruling that prohibits Apple from collecting fees for purchases made outside the app itself. Back then, Apple was told to change its app store so developers could direct customers to…
The tech layoff wave is still kicking in 2025. Last year saw more than 150,000 job cuts across 549 companies, according to independent layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi. So far this year, more than 22,000 workers have been the victim of reductions across the tech industry, with a staggering 16,084 cuts taking place in February alone. We’re tracking layoffs in the tech industry in 2025 so you can see the trajectory of the cutbacks and understand the impact on innovation across all types of companies. As businesses continue to embrace AI and automation, this tracker serves as a reminder of the human…
Google's Gemini Chatbot app now allows you to change both images and images generated by AI uploaded from your phone or computer. Native image editing at Gemini will unfold slowly today and expand to more people in more than 45 languages and most countries in the coming weeks. The release follows the AI image editing model piloted by Google on the AI Studio platform in March. Like ChATGPT's recently upgraded image editing tool, Gemini's NewFangled Native Image Editor can achieve better results than the standalone AI image generator. Gemini provides a “multi-step” editing flow where Google describes “further, more contextual”…
Meta's X-rival Instagram threads have now grown to over 350 million active users. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Wednesday during the company's first quarter revenue call. This is an increase of 30 million users since the last quarter, and Meta reports that it has 320 million users on its thread. The new figures represent an increase in growth as threads added 30 million in the first quarter of this year compared to 20 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. It is also worth noting that in the quarter, the thread added roughly the same users as one of its new…
Apple sent a notification this week to several people who believe the company is targeting government spyware, according to the two targets. In the past, Apple sent similar notifications to Spyware targets and victims, and directed them to contact nonprofits specializing in investigating such cyberattacks. Other tech companies, such as Google and WhatsApp, have been sending such notifications regularly to their users in recent years. As of Wednesday, only two people had made the move to make it clear they were among those who received notifications from Apple this week. One is Ciro Pellegrino, an Italian journalist who works for…
Since its launch almost 20 years ago, SpeedTest.net has been one of the most popular tools used to measure internet speed. However, Doug Suttles, founder and former CEO of Ookla, the network testing company behind SpeedTest, felt that measuring speed wasn't enough to tell you everything you want to know about your internet connection. So, Suttles is launching a new tool called ORB, which measures latency, packet loss, jitter and speed to measure internet connection stability. Suttles, who started Orb with Ookla executive Jamie Steven in 2023, said Speedtest.net was the right tool at the time, but as internet speeds…
Retail investors are increasingly shaping secondary markets. In the fourth quarter of 2024, platforms like Equityzen reported that 86% of total transaction volume came from retail participants. This is an eye-catching shift in tools like Forge and Equityzen as tools such as broader access to individual stocks. But does more access mean more opportunities, or more risk? Today, fair to say, Rebecca Veran is joined by Manhattan venture partner Jared Carmel, delving into what is called the second “One Generation Opportunity.” Listen to the entire episode and hear the following: How did the MVP function to “institutionalize” secondary from the…